


canceling the apocalypse

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Eventual Fluff, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, M/M, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Saving the World, The Author Regrets Nothing, the drift parts are a feast of run-on sentences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 05:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1732541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“It’s never going to work,” Theon whispers as they get closer to the Jaeger. “That’s – for fuck’s sake, Robb, there are exactly three people who think that this has half a chance in hell of working. You, the Marshall and </i>Jaime Lannister<i>.”</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>Robb has to crack a smile at that. “Well, I suppose I would know who I want to drift with, seems to me that the Marshall got that far also because he can assess a situation, and Jaime Lannister is the only person on this fucking planet who managed to crack the code of kaiju DNA. Seems to me like it’s not that bad of a group.”</i></p><p> </p><p>Or: where Robb and Theon are drift compatible and an apocalypse gets canceled. Also featuring Jaime and Brienne as team scientists and Davos as Pentecost. And the breach is in the middle of the Narrow Sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Uhm, okay, so. I wrote the first half of this fic for thrumugnyr months ago and posted it on tumblr, then I felt like there was more to it and I thought I'd wrap it up.
> 
> Wrapping it up meant having a second part as long as the first obviously *facepalm* also the first part is 90% one POV with sliiightly non-linear narrative, the second ended up being a bunch of different POVs. Sorry if this looks like some experiment in creative writing.
> 
> Also, Pacific Rim doesn't belong to me, ASOIAF doesn't belong to me, nothing belongs to me and I totally went and killed a lot less people than the original movie did. Also I hadn't thought I'd post it today but I just watched 4x08 and I decided I needed to edit myself some fluff.

“Stark, this is a very bad idea,” Theon says as they walk towards Grey Wind.

“You’re hardly the first person to point that out to me,” Robb replies, taking in the looks of his repaired old Jaeger. He hadn’t thought it could ever be like _this_ again – it looks brand new. “And I think that our compatibility results say otherwise.”

Fuck if they had. Robb had tried going against twenty-five people before Theon had given it a try – and he wouldn’t have if Marshall Seaworth hadn’t insisted.

Robb had understood that Theon was _different_ after the first two seconds. And he knows that Theon had felt it, too.

God, it felt even smoother than it had with Robb’s own father, and Robb is not going to think about that day when Ned Stark died in the very same Jaeger he’s stepping into.

\--

_“We need you”, Davos Seaworth tells him, after he finds him during his lunch break. The half built Wall looms behind him. He can hear Renly Baratheon on the news on the television nearby, saying that the Stormlands are safe just because of him and his brother, and what is the government in King’s Landing thinking, defunding the Jaeger program?_

_“You don’t. Marshall, you were there, you know –”_

_“I was, and believe me, I know even too well how it must feel for you. But we need capable pilots, and I’m not going to trust a couple of newbies with_ your _old Jaeger, Robb. You know as much as everyone else that this Wall isn’t going to stop shit, and even if you didn’t want to pilot, you’re wasted here. You never were just an extension of your father, and you should know that.”_

_Robb sighs, not even having the strength to argue with it. Seaworth is right. There’s a reason why he is the Marshall of the last standing Shatterdrome. The only one left, for that matter._

_“Where?” Robb asks, figuring that at some point he would have had to deal with what he has not so successfully attempted to ignore in the last four years of his life. (Namely, that his father died while they were fighting a category three just outside White Harbor, and that his father died while the neural handshake between the two of them was still activated.)_

_“We’re all relocating to Pentos. It’s closer to the breach.”_

_“What are you planning to do?”_

_“We can’t just fight them anymore. We’re going to nuke the breach. You do see why I need someone with skills, don’t you?”_

_Robb does._

\--

“It’s never going to work,” Theon whispers as they get closer to the Jaeger. “That’s – for fuck’s sake, Robb, there are exactly three people who think that this has half a chance in hell of working. You, the Marshall and _Jaime Lannister_.”

Robb has to crack a smile at that. “Well, I suppose I would know who I want to drift with, seems to me that the Marshall got that far also because he can assess a situation, and Jaime Lannister is the only person on this fucking planet who managed to crack the code of kaiju DNA. Seems to me like it’s not that bad of a group.”

“For fuck’s sake, the Marshall and you are… are compromised and Lannister is batshit crazy – he’s fucking going to treat with _Roose Bolton_ just because he wants a bloody kaiju brain and he drifted with one! Robb, I don’t –”

“Theon,” Robb interrupts as they make their way to their positions, “stop. I know. And fine, you’re an idiot most of the time –”

“Hey!”

“ – but you should understand that out of everyone you could drift with, maybe I am the only person who would get it?”

\--

_Robb meets Theon Greyjoy under the heavy rain in Pentos (shows that the kaiju fucked with everything, because it never used to rain much in Essos) as soon as he gets out of the plane that brought him here. Davos Seaworth introduces him as the engineer who fixed up Grey Wind, and Theon sort of maybe blushes when he says that it’s a work of art. The name sounds familiar, though, but Robb doesn’t press._

_“Did you ever pilot one?” Robb asks out of sheer curiosity while they head to the Shatterdrome._

_Theon looks out of the window. “I used to. Not anymore. And never one like yours.”_

_Robb hears it when someone doesn’t want to pursue a conversation, and he doesn’t press._

_The Shatterdrome is – well, exactly as he remembers it, except a lot more crowded. Then again, all of the remaining Jaegers and pilots are stuck here, so he couldn’t have expected anything else. Theon doesn’t interact much with anyone else, and at some point he excuses himself and says that he has to go check some technical things before they try to make Grey Wind operative again._

_Robb is pretty sure that he hears someone say ‘Greyjoy should really stop being such an ass,’ and ‘here we go again, why can’t that kid ever give a shit about everyone else’. Robb didn’t get that impression at all, but he doesn’t ask for explanations either._

_The other introductions go from great to complete disaster. Renly Baratheon falls under complete disaster – he greets Robb asking him if he got rusty in the last four years, and since his Jaeger is going to be the one nuking the breach while Robb is supposed to be in the rear, he’d better not fuck it up. Stannis, his brother, goes moderately better – he grinds his teeth as Renly leaves, excuses himself to Robb for his brother’s behavior, shakes his hand firmly and goes after him. The Tyrell brothers, the team from the Reach – Garlan, Loras and Willas, they have the only three-armed Jaeger around – are pleasant enough, though not overtly friendly either. Oberyn Martell and Ellaria Sand – the not quite married couple from Dorne – are very much overtly friendly, which is a welcome change from Renly Baratheon._

_The science division straight-up insane – the last thing he’d have expected to find was Jaime Lannister, scientist extraordinaire and greatest expert on kaiju biology around (and also the son of the tycoon financing the Wall’s construction – Robb thinks that he’s been at odds with his family for years) arguing with a woman slightly taller than him, definitely bulkier and who definitely did not take any of his shit while he was hands down in kaiju liver and she’s writing equations on a blackboard._

_Then he learns that she’s Brienne of Tarth, mathematical genius extraordinaire and the person who came up with the Jaeger plans when she was twenty-five and coded the software for most of them. They paint a strikingly queer picture – they’re sharing a room with a piece of tape dividing it in half, he’s dressed in an old t-shirt and jeans and his side is filthy, while she’s wearing responsible long skirts and a dress shirt, and her side is covered in chalk but otherwise perfectly neat._

_They also argue all the time, but Jaime tells him cheerfully that they wouldn’t get done half of their work if they didn’t challenge each other, and Brienne doesn’t contradict him before warning Seaworth that a category four might show up in the next day._

_That afternoon, Robb spars against fifteen people who might possibly be drift-compatible. Theon had picked all of them._

_All of them are a bust._

_He spars with Theon the morning after, and it’s so smooth and_ flawless _that he can barely believe it. While they spar, he can see Theon’s eyes going alive with the joy of it, and no one around them is talking or commenting, and after neither of them can get the upper hand for fifteen minutes, Davos Seaworth clears his throat._

_“Seems to me like we have a candidate.”_

_Theon bolts out of the room._

_Robb tries to ask him through the door to his own room, but he receives no answer._

_At dinner, Renly Baratheon says that if Robb really pairs up with Greyjoy it’d be the most ironically mismatched team ever and wouldn’t it be hilarious to watch, and it ends with Robb punching Renly in the face. He doesn’t know what’s up with Theon, but he’s not going to let Renly talk like this about someone who has been nothing but nice to Robb, and who surely isn’t useless if he could fix Grey Wind by himself._

_Stannis doesn’t even tell Robb he was wrong. Renly leaves the room leaning on Loras Tyrell’s shoulder._

_Robb asks Davos._

_Davos sighs. “It’s a long story. And it happened while you were retired, so you probably wouldn’t know. See, there are two people in the world who lost their drift partner while fighting a kaiju. You and him.”_

_“What?”_

_“His sister. It was the first time a category four showed up in the Iron Islands – she pushed him into the escape pod and ejected him from the Jaeger a minute before the kaiju smashed it, with her inside it. I can’t go into further details because it’s not my business and you will find out in the drift anyway, if we convince him to go for it, but he never really recovered from that blow.”_

_“That’s fine,” Robb says. “I never did, either.”_

\--

“Fine, I can give you that,” Theon concedes as they walk inside the Conn-Pod, taking position. “But – you really don’t want to do this, Stark. Find someone else.”

“Theon, you know that it’s bullshit. I won’t find someone else with whom – with whom I’ll do what I did with you. I know it.”

“You have too much faith in others,” Theon sighs as the pod is dropped down in position. “Stark, I – I fuck things up. It’s what I _do_. I’m not going to be of any use to you.”

“Theon, shut the hell up and let’s do this. Considering that you have fifty-three simulations gone right on fifty-three, excuse me if I don’t believe you.”

“How do you even know that?”

Robb positively rolls his eyes. “Davos Seaworth, how would I?”

“Fucking traitor,” Theon hisses.

“If you two are done bantering, maybe we can get this show rolling,” Samwell Tarly says through his comm, and – yeah. Right. Good point. Also Robb is never going to get over the fact that the tech chief is also his half-brother’s partner, and he wishes Jon wasn’t cleaning up the pieces up North, where the last category four shattered the newly built Wall, but that’s not the problem right now.

“Sure,” Robb says, putting on his Pons helmet.

Theon does the same, looking mostly dejected.

“Come on,” Robb says. “Let’s just try this. You know the deal. Close your eyes, don’t chase the RABIT and it’s going to be a piece of cake.”

“I wish,” Theon mutters, but then he tells Sam that he’s good.

“Right. Drop in confirmed,” Sam says then. “Initiating pilot protocol, sir.”

So Davos Seaworth has to be there, Robb thinks.

“Grey Wind ready and aligned,” Sam says cheerfully after a few seconds.

“Grey Wind, ready for neural handshake,” Seaworth says.

Right. Good. Robb can do this. He hasn’t done it in ages, but he was good at it. Never chased the RABIT once, his dad hadn’t either, he’s going to do this. If he doesn’t start thinking about White Harbor, but he’s _not_.

“Starting fifteen seconds, fourteen, thirteen, twelve…”

“Theon. It’s going to be _fine_.”

Theon looks tense as he nods once and doesn’t even look at Robb in the face.

“Neural Handshake initiating,” Grey Wind’s AI says when the count goes to zero.

_Neural interface drift initiating._

Robb takes another deep breath.

_Right hemisphere calibrated. Left hemisphere calibrated. Ready to activate._

And then it starts.

Robb tries not to latch on to anything. He doesn’t take a moment to think about any of his memories that he’s sure Theon can see right now – how his mother used to cradle him after he scraped a knee when he was three, him and Jon racing each other and seeing who could climb higher, his sisters bickering – him siding with Sansa and Jon with Arya all the time –, his little brothers on their first day of school, the first day the kaiju showed up from the Narrow Sea, him going to the Academy because his father was in the military and he wanted to drift with him after the Jaeger technology was developed, and he ignores abruptly that fucking day in White Harbor – Theon doesn’t need any memory of the drift being torn the moment Ned Stark died and Robb finished the kaiju alone and blinded by grief.

And Theon starts well, too – Robb doesn’t even have time to see much, it’s all going so fast – but he sees a family not at all like his own, where the only two people Theon seemed to care for were his sister and his mother. He sees a lonely childhood, even lonelier after Theon’s mother dies of what seems like cancer, and then the kaiju happen and he sees Theon’s father sending all of his kids to the Academy. Rodrik and Maron, the first two, never make it past the first semester, but Theon and his sister Asha pass every test with flying colors, but then Rodrik and Maron are expelled and become even more bitter towards him, and then Asha dies and she can’t stop the kaiju from destroying Harlaw and he can’t either because he’s floating in an escape pod far away from there, and for a moment Robb feels _pain_ which is entirely similar and somehow not the same as his own – at least the neural handshake had been long broken when Asha Greyjoy died crushed in her own machine, but Theon moves on from that in a moment, and then there’s a dark patch of which Robb can’t see anything but which makes him almost want to vomit for all the _negative_ it projects, and Robb can almost see the end, he can see the neural bridge stabilizing and –

He’s at the King’s Landing shatterdrome.

He remembers it even too well, even if he hasn’t been there in ages, and it can only mean something.

Theon is chasing the RABIT.

_Shit_ , he thinks, and then he hears a voice.

“You’re _useless_ ,” someone says from the room on Robb’s left. The tone makes him feel horrible – it’s so cold, Robb almost wants to throw up.

He walks inside the room, and Theon is sitting on a chair, shoulders hunched, in front of a desk occupied by a man in his sixties whose bitterness makes him almost look seventy-five. There’s a tag on the desk. _Balon Greyjoy_.

His father, then.

“Dad, I couldn’t do anything – she threw me out before I could even –”

“Don’t you dare speak of your sister in front of me. It’s your bloody fault that she’s dead.”

“I didn’t exactly choose to get thrown out of there now, did I?”

“If you have been _better_ she wouldn’t have needed to do it! But what do you know. I should have told her to pair with Maron, not with you.”

“Maron didn’t pass –”

“Don’t even try that! I always knew you were no good, since the times your mother wouldn’t stop coddling you and make you think you were so much better, but no, you had to go fuck it up and kill your sister, and then I find you shacking up with the son of motherfucking _Roose Bolton_?”

“I didn’t – I didn’t even know it was him, and I left –”

“With the son of motherfucking Roose Bolton! How can we even be related?”

“I’m sorry,” Theon sobs a moment later.

“Oh, and he’s crying. Do you think it’s going to help you any?”

Robb doesn’t even want to quantify how much he’d like to vomit all over again, but – fuck. Fuck. It’s been at least three minutes. Out there they must be panicking, if they’ve been chasing the RABIT this long.

“Theon!” he shouts.

No one hears it. Obviously.

“Theon, damn it, this isn’t real and he’s full of crap and you know it!”

For a moment nothing happens, but then Theon turns towards him, eyes wide and tears streaking down his cheeks. 

Robb is about to ask if he can see him, but then –

“Greyjoy, I think that was enough, wasn’t it?”

Davos Seaworth, looking three years younger than he is now, walks inside the room. Stannis Baratheon is behind him. Davos looks furious, Stannis – he’s grinding his teeth. Robb thinks it’s the pissed off kind of grinding.

“What?”

“ _Enough_ ,” Seaworth replies, sounding angry like Robb never saw him. Seaworth is famous for never getting pissed unless it’s really bad. “I’m not hearing another word of it and I don’t think your son is hearing much more, either. Are you gone mad?”

“It’s his fault if –”

“Have you even watched the surveillance footage? Your daughter realized that they didn’t have a chance against that thing and that there wasn’t time for the two of them to escape. She made a choice, and she chose to save him, and he didn’t even have time to act. If you ask me, it was pretty fucking selfless of her, and you’re not going to demean her choice like this. For all you’re saying about loving your daughter, seems to me like you’re quite disrespecting her, aren’t you? Not to mention that while your two first sons were in fact quite useless at this, _he_ was the first of his class and at all the extra ones he took, killed his first kaiju when he was seventeen just because otherwise his sister would have needed a different partner and you insisted for the whole thing to be between family. He probably was a lot more useful to us than you ever were, and I’ve never even heard you mentioning him once in all the time we’ve worked together. And you know what, you don’t even know how lucky you are.”

“I’m lucky.”

“Do I need remind you that I lost my wife and two of my children during an attack, and the other two because they died like your daughter? And I can assure you, if one of them had saved the other, I’d have cried tears of fucking joy. You lost one, I lost _four_. Yes, you’re lucky. And then you also have the nerve to criticize him because he hooked up with a notorious insane guy when he’s probably grieving, too, and you didn’t even speak to him once before this stupid conversation? Fuck this, I’m having you transferred back to Pyke tomorrow.”

“Seaworth, you can’t –”

“I have the higher rank. I can. But since I think I can use your kid, if he wants to stay, he’s welcome.”

“ _Theon_ ,” Robb hisses again, and Theon looks back at him again, shaking his head.

“Stark,” he says, sounding resigned.

“You know that Seaworth’s right, isn’t he?”

“He’s not,” Theon replies, barely audible. “He means well, but he’s not. I killed her,” he says again, his voice trembling. “And I didn’t even get my shit together for months, and I’m just – I fuck things up, I fuck everything up –”

“Hey. Listen to me, okay? It’s not too late. Really, it’s not. We got through the rest fine, didn’t we? And Seaworth is right – shit, I might have been sixteen when I went into a Jaeger first but I wanted it. I didn’t do it because anyone pressured me. And then – you did that for four years and after that, you didn’t throw in the towel and went and performed engineering miracles? Your dad fucked it up, not you. We leave now, we can still stabilize the bridge. Come on, no one thinks that we’re ever going to work out, so what about we show them different?”

“Christ, you’re serious,” Theon says, but he’s half-grinning and shrugging his shoulders and then he says, “What the hell, might as well try,” and then the memory disappears completely and there’s just _light_ and –

“Neural handshake strong and holding,” Sam’s voice says, sounding relieved. “Christ, you gave us a scare. We were about to disconnect everything.”

“No need for that,” Robb says, grinning, feeling the drift completely, all the way down to his bones, and then he feels a wave of pure relief washing over him from his right side and he doesn’t even need to look at Theon to know that he wants to move the right arm up and the left leg forward. He can faintly hear clapping from the outside as they move in perfect unison.

“See, I told you,” Seaworth says in the comms, but Robb is sure that it wasn’t directed to him.

When he looks at Theon, there’s something so very soft in the way he’s looking at Robb, and Robb can’t stop himself from grinning wider.

“Seems like team crazy was right, wasn’t it?”

“Fine, Stark, you win this one,” Theon replies, and he feels so happy through the neural link that Robb doesn’t even try to find a come back to it.

\--

When they interrupt the simulation and get back on the ground, Robb can’t help feeling absolutely smug about all this. No one is even trying to imply that it might have been a bad idea. Renly looks horribly sorry about it and excuses himself for the previous days – Robb decides that it’s not worth to have bad blood between them, and Renly is definitely stressed (as everyone else around here, but since he and his brother killed five kaiju in the last two weeks probably moreso). Two girls gossiping, though, do have a say about it, whispering to each other.

“Can you believe that they’re drift-compatible? How can a nice guy like Robb being compatible with that ass?”

“Who knows. As long as they kill kaiju, I can’t complain.”

Robb was about to go say something, but then Lannister shows up with Brienne in tow, an eye that looks completely bloodshot and congratulates him before slapping Theon with maybe too much force on the back.

“You owe me money, Greyjoy.”

“I do _what_?”

“Who bet you, three years ago, that you weren’t a crappy pilot and you would get your ass on one of those things again?”

“Yeah, well, maybe you’ll get that money after the world isn’t over, how about it?”

“Fine, but you owe me.”

“Oh, for – congratulations, the two of you,” Brienne interrupts, and Robb wants to thank her. “And Jaime, you’re barely alive, you made me lose ten years of my own bloody life if we ever survive this because of how I found you in the lab, and you’re thinking about the money Greyjoy owes you?”

“I might be a disgraced Lannister, but you don’t shake out the family trait from your DNA that easily, wench.”

_Wench_? Brienne rolls her eyes, though. Right. Has to be an in-joke. “The family trait being?” Robb asks.

“Hoarding money, obviously.”

“I hate you,” Brienne sighs, and it’s obvious that she doesn’t mean it at all.

\--

That evening, Robb finds Theon sitting in the open cockpit of the discarded Jaeger next to Grey Wind – it’s a museum piece, the core is gone, but it’s high enough that they can see the horizon line and a few stars.

“No celebratory sleeping?”

“I don’t sleep much,” Theon shrugs. “And when I do, I keep on dreaming about Asha telling me to say hi to everyone before shoving me out. Then I wonder why I’m completely fucked up.”

“Well, now –”

“Seriously, you’re committing suicide and the last thing you tell me is _say hi to everyone_?”

“You know it’s your fault as much as my dad dying is mine, right? Which would mean, it’s not.”

“I – I know that. I’m not sure that I get that, but – you’ve seen how it was.”

“Your dad is an ass. And I hope you know that, too.”

“Fuck, that I do. Damn him. I spent twenty-one years of my life trying to make him happy in every possible way, but I guess it was wasted effort.”

“Too bad for him. You’re good at that.”

“I’m –”

“You are, idiot. It takes two to tango with one of these things, and I’m pretty sure your sister wasn’t dragging useless baggage around according to her. The only thing I’m wondering is why you ended up fixing _my_ Jaeger.”

Theon shrugs, then moves so that one of his knees is curled around his chest while the other leg is dangling down the edge. “I wasn’t exactly going to pilot again. As if I trusted anyone in my head, anyway. And – I was good at the engineering thing. Really good. Not that anyone but Asha ever noticed, but – after my dad left, I stayed here and repaired things around. Your – Grey Wind was just standing there with a potentially functioning core and the rest completely fucked. The one Asha and I were piloting was useless, but – that one wasn’t. And I knew that it was the only other one that – was in a similar situation. I told Seaworth that I wanted to fix it, he said that we could always use more operating machines and to knock myself out. Last thing I suspected was that he was planning to have you in it.”

“I’m not some kind of celebrity, you know.”

“Are you serious? Shit, this is gonna be embarrassing.”

“If you hid it from me the first time, I might see it the second, you know.”

“… Do you know how many people went into one of these things before they were eighteen?”

“Not really?”

“Two. You and me. But you started a year before I did. And you were good at it. I used to think that hey, if you managed it, I could do the same even if I didn’t feel anywhere near ready.”

Robb – Robb feels really fucking flattered at this, and Theon’s cheeks go red the moment Robb thinks it, which probably means that at least on Theon’s side, there are still some side effects.

Interesting.

“Hey, I really am flattered.”

“Damn you, I thought that when everyone spoke volumes about how nice you are, they were exaggerating.”

“Oh, they’re not?”

“Not at all,” Theon replies, his voice not so steady. “It’s throwing me in for a fucking loop.”

“Why?”

He shrugs and Robb wants to kick himself in the face – another thing he _felt_ in the Drift, was that after his sister died Theon never went out of his way to play nice with anyone that wasn’t Davos Seaworth or Sam, so it’s not like people are nice to him in return. After all, if people are wondering how they’re even compatible, there has to be a reason.

“Well, I’ll be even nicer and thank you for fixing up Grey Wind.”

“You’re welcome, but I wasn’t paying you a favor by doing it.”

“No, you were paying the two of us a favor.”

“What?”

“For your glowing CV, you can be pretty dim. If any of us dies while fighting kaiju, Grey Wind will probably be our grave, not just mine. Or yours. Do you think that I’m gonna look for another drift partner now?”

“You should. I almost –”

“You pulled yourself together and it was the first time after years, give yourself a pass. For the rest? Shit, I think I’m more compatible with you than I was with my dad. I’d be an idiot if I looked for someone else.”

“… oh. All right then. Not like I’m going anywhere.”

God, he honestly looks like someone who can’t handle a compliment. Robb doesn’t ask about that clouded memory he barely brushed against in the drift and doesn’t even think when he reaches down and grabs Theon’s hand. He threads his fingers around Theon’s gently, thinking _well, it’s not like I’m going anywhere either, am I?_ , and Theon doesn’t pull away but rather looks up at him after staring down at their hands.

“You’re not?”

Huh. Robb is sure that he hasn’t spoken out loud – Theon must really be feeling the after effects of the drift more than he is. He can barely feel the emotions by now. And… well, it’s not what Robb had expected, but he can work with it.

“I’m not,” Robb says against the shell of his ear – Theon lets his head drop against Robb’ s shoulder moments later, and he sighs in relief when Robb’s free hand cups the back of his head.

It all feels so right, he thinks. And it’s not even the lingering effects of the drift – it’s just that they _fit_ , and pretty well for that matter, and Robb figures that even if their attempt to end this kaiju madness once and for all fails, then he doesn’t regret having come here at all.

\--

“Brienne, I’m betting you _money_ that if we all get out alive from this fucking craziness, Stark and Greyjoy will have bloody Davos Seaworth marrying them before they vacate the premises.”

“Jaime, after ten years of sharing vital space with you, I would like to think that I’m smart enough not to bet my hard-earned money on something you want to bet on. Especially when they haven’t paid me in six months.”

“You’re no fun,” Jaime tells her while he gets ready to go get the kaiju brain that he’s sure he has convinced Bolton to find – he hates the man, but they do need his kaiju organs smuggling. Someone can worry about arresting him after they postpone the end of the world. 

“I never pretended to be. And don’t you dare come back with both eyes bloodshot, Lannister.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” he replies amiably before grabbing his coat and leaving the room. He doesn’t notice the worried stare Brienne sends at his retreating back.

\--

_“You know, Stark, you didn’t have to punch Baratheon in the face because he talks shit about me. It’s fine. Everyone does, at some point.”_

_“That’s hardly a reason for me not to punch him in the face,” Robb replies as Theon stands almost awkwardly outside his door._

_“Hell, you’re serious.”_

_“And you need to work on your self-esteem. But in all honesty – Theon, I need someone to drift with. Can you just give it a try?”_

_“I don’t –”_

_“Seaworth told me. I know, all right? And it’s the same for me. I don’t want to do this. But I have to. Please don’t make me find someone else who won’t be as good as you’d be at it.”_

_Theon looks straight at him, then he takes a deep breath._

_“Fine. Fine, Stark, I’m going to fucking drift with you. Just don’t complain to me when it doesn’t work, okay?”_

_Robb can’t help it – he grins, unable to keep it back. “I won’t. Because I won’t need to.”_

_The way Theon smiles at him just slightly, it’s obvious that he doesn’t believe it._

_Robb thinks he’ll be very, very glad to prove him wrong._


	2. Chapter 2

5.

They should have had more time.

Except that of course they didn’t, Sam Tarly thinks in the aftermath of the category four attack that screwed up all of their carefully crafted plans.

Well, maybe not _carefully crafted_ , but he had thought it was a decent plan. Four functioning Jaegers would have sufficed to go into the breach on the very next day, but clearly Brienne hadn’t been wrong in her calculations and one category four and a bloody _category five_ had in fact showed up before they could all get started.

Conveniently, they had to show up exactly while Lannister was out dealing with damned Roose Bolton. They had tried to first send out just the two oldest Jaegers, the one with the Tyrell brothers and the one from Dorne, but everyone else had to join them after minutes, when they all realized that it wasn’t an even fight.

It could have gone worse, sure, but it’s not doing much to make him feel better at all.

The tally isn’t helping any. The only positive thing about it is that Stark, Greyjoy and their Jaeger are the only ones who got out of it without injuries and without damages to the machine – whoever thought they were a bad match isn’t talking at all now, especially when if it hadn’t been for them sweeping in and taking out the category five it would have been much worse. The rest? Not that great. Loras is the only survivor out of the Tyrell brothers, even if he’s covered with thankfully not life-threatening burns, and their Jaeger isn’t even fit for a museum. The Martells… well, they managed to leave the Jaeger before they were crushed, but they’re both in the med bay with serious injuries everyfuckingwhere, so they’re out for the count. The Baratheons fared better than them – their Jaeger only needs a few maintenance repairs, and Stannis came out of it with a broken arm, but it’s nothing to be happy about. As it is, the only two drift compatible people that they have available are Stark and Greyjoy, and it’s not like they can send them in the breach alone. In the midst of this mess, Lannister is MIA and after the immediate danger had passed, Brienne had left in a hurry saying that the crazy idiot needed his bloody equipment brought over in the city and she’d go see what he had gotten himself into personally.

So they have the entire science division the gods know where, two good machines, one pair of pilots and _five_ category five showing up in half a day if Brienne isn’t wrong.

Point is, she never is, so hoping that this is the one time where she gets it wrong wouldn’t help that much.

“And that’s it,” he sighs staring at the screen in front of him, hoping that he doesn’t get called before five minutes, because if he’s dying at some point between now and the next sunset, he really wants to have those five minutes for himself.

The transmission is, of course, disturbed – he’s in Pentos and Jon is at Eastwatch, of course it would be, so he can see his face for seconds before it becomes covered by static, but at least they can hear each other fine.

“Shit. Are you still going through with it?”

Sam sighs and longs for the times when the two of them took tech classes together at the Academy and it seemed like Jaegers would work forever and that the kaiju would have eventually relented.

“Seaworth said that he’d re-think it but we’d have to at least try. Then again, he’s right. If we do there’s one chance on a thousand that we don’t die, if we don’t there isn’t even that. And how are things over there?”

“A disaster,” Jon answers with a defeated sigh. “There was really nothing to recover. It’s all Wall debris, the few people who survived are here in the underground bunker and it’s not like we could get the Castle Black Shatterdrome up and running again on our own. Especially since it’s burned to the ground.”

“… Really? Damn. You know, I miss it at times.”

“You miss _training_ among all this ice? Has the weather gone to your head?”

“It wasn’t so bad in comparison,” Sam shrugs. For a moment the transmission clears and Jon is staring at him through the screen.

“How long has it been since you cut your hair?” Sam asks when he finally can see his face clearly.

“Well, you were the last putting scissors to it, do the maths.”

“… three months ago? Fine, I give up.” Jon half-smirks at him, and it’s gone after a second, but it was nice enough that he did at all. All things considered. Sam forces himself to smile back.

Then he hears the alarm.

“Damn. Seaworth must be done re-thinking that plan. Listen, I have to go, but – if this is the last time we see each other –”

“I love you too, you idiot. And say hi to Robb from me, okay?”

“… Okay,” Sam answers, and then the line goes dead before he can close the call himself.

Fine then, he might as well go. As he walks towards Seaworth’s office, he doesn’t even find it in himself to feel bad about this. After all, if he dies, it’s going to be in his comfortable chair in the tech cabin, not under the ocean fighting monsters. It’s a lot more than whoever has to go down can say.

He gets to the office not long later, at the same time as Renly. They’re the last two. Inside, there are the Marshall, Stannis, Loras Tyrell, Robb and Theon. No one else.

4\. 

Davos takes a deep breath and looks at the people in front of him, wishing that he had come up with a not so half-assed plan, and that it was better than what he has right now, but he can’t afford to linger too long on this. Not when their hours are counted and when all of the science division isn’t here to tell him if anything has changed in the breach situation. Half-assed is going to have to do.

“Gentlemen,” he starts, “I really wish that I could come up with a more decent plan, but as it is, we have two hours at most before we have to leave. Now, you all know what we should have done, but sadly the two Jaegers we lost aren’t fixable. So we’ll have to do with two. Which is already a suicidal option, but still, better than none. Now. Robb, Theon, you two are good at least. The problem is Proudwing.”

“Davos, if you want me to pilot –” Stannis starts, and Davos raises his hand cutting him right in the middle. Yeah, fine, he _knew_ the stubborn bastard would have said that, and he’s not going to let him do it.

“Stannis, your arm is broken in three different places. Now, I know that it wouldn’t stop you from piloting, and yes I do remember that time you killed a category two with a broken leg, but you’ve done more than enough for the cause and the last thing you deserve is me sending you against more than one category five kaiju like that.”

“I could do it,” Loras says a moment later, his voice hoarse. “I mean, it’s all superficial burns. They don’t even hurt that much. And I think the compatibility wouldn’t be a problem.” He goes slightly red in the face as he says it and as Renly’s hand wraps around his elbow. Well, of course it wouldn’t, not when they’ve been together for years, but that’s exactly the reason why Davos isn’t letting this happen.

“If you pilot and we all survive for some kind of miracle, and you do it with superficial burns all over your body… you do know that it’s a very bad idea? We have to nuke the breach. I’m not letting you be exposed to all that radiation if I can’t help it, not when you aren’t even bloody thirty and when the suit helps it.”

“So who should do it?” Renly asks, sounding puzzled for maybe a moment before his eyes go wide. Ah. He did see it.

“You’re going with me,” Davos sighs. He hasn’t stepped foot in a Jaeger in years, not since the last time he partnered with Stannis before Renly came into the picture, and he always was better at strategizing than at fighting, but he never was bad at it. He’ll do. “Compatibility won’t be an issue. The only thing I was better than anyone else at, during training, was giving others a clean handshake – and while I’m out of practice, at least I don’t have physical injuries. So. You and I go first, Robb and Theon cover us, Stannis can take my place while I’m gone. And Sam, I need you to be in position already because someone needs to check that everything’s working when we get down there.”

“Of course.” Sam stands up and leaves the room in a hurry. Davos feels tired.

“Right. Any questions, or we’re good?”

Everyone is good, except for Stannis, who’s looking at him weird. Davos also knows which kind of weird it is.

“Right. You can leave – just be ready when it’s time. I imagine you don’t want to spend the potential last two hours of your lives discussing strategy with me.”

Tyrell sends him a half-grateful look before he grabs Renly’s hand and they’re out of the room. Theon gives him a terse nod and leaves, Robb following a moment later, and Davos figures he’ll have to talk to the kid before they leave, but not right now.

“You don’t have to do this,” Stannis says when he’s sure no one can hear them, his shoulders losing rigidity a little, and Davos shakes his head as he reaches out and covers Stannis’s hand with his own.

“No, I do.”

“Davos, I spent my entire life doing what I had to, and it should be me down there. It’s no matter if –”

“I _know_ that you spent your entire life doing your stupid duty for the military, the government and the Academy, and that’s exactly why you’re going to stay here. The gods know that you could have used some more appreciation for it from everyone involved, but since I doubt there’s going to be time for that later, however it goes, then at least you deserve some rest.”

“Right, and you do realize that if it goes wrong, or that if it goes right but you all die in the attempt, I’m going to be the one screwed over, Davos? Because at least Tyrell still has his sister.”

Davos knows that, too. He has lost all family except Renly to the damned kaiju in every other way, and they’re both going down.

“If it makes you feel better, I swear I’ll try to get the both of us out. And if I can only get one of us out, then I’ll try to save your brother.”

“That’s not what I’d call a decent outcome, damn you,” Stannis hisses, gritting his teeth all over again, before turning his stare on him. “There’s _one_ thing that would make me feel better, though.”

“Right. What?”

“Let Renly stay up here and I go with you.”

“What? He’s never going to accept. As much as it doesn’t look like it, he wants to do his duty as much as you do.”

“Good thing we have _something_ in common, but you aren’t getting it. If you both die, it’s not just me who gets screwed over, it’s also my brother’s stupid boyfriend. Who I might not like, but he just lost most of his siblings not even two days ago. Renly can stay here and they can have a life if this mission pulls through. For what concerns us… at this point would it even matter if we couldn’t get out? I wouldn’t be asking you this if Greyjoy and Stark weren’t obviously made for each other, but since they are, I’m asking you.”

… and that’s an entirely good point. Stannis does know how it has worked between him and Theon, in the last few years, and maybe he’d have had more concern regarding his own life if Robb wasn’t in the picture – after all, if your last surviving relative is Balon Greyjoy then it counts for none. But Robb is in the picture now.

“Damn, Stannis, if only everyone knew that you’re such a romantic that not only you’re willing to die with me but you’d sacrifice your life for your brother and his boyfriend that _you don’t even like_?”

“You wouldn’t dare putting it in these terms to anyone else, I hope.”

“Are you crazy? It’s the kind of knowledge I want to keep for myself,” Davos replies, and maybe he shouldn’t have relented, but as his fingers thread with Stannis’s he figures that maybe it is better for everyone included.

Renly doesn’t protest half as much as Davos thought he would, but maybe it was the way Stannis was staring him down and the _for the love of the gods just let me do the selfish thing for once_ that Stannis has said through gritted teeth. Loras looks at them as if he’s ashamed that he feels grateful, but Davos won’t begrudge him that.

Two hours later, they’re all suited up and ready to go. Robb and Theon are in the tech room, waiting for them, and Davos feels too old and not suited for this task, but someone has to do it.

“Robb, do you mind if I have a word with him in private?”

“Of course not,” Robb answers, and he goes towards the Jaegers with Stannis in tow. Davos goes with Theon until the stairs, then stops him there.

“Right. I’m going to keep this short because I know how you feel about this kind of talk.”

“What –”

“Stop. So, there’s a very likely chance that one of us isn’t coming back. Or the both of us, for that matter.”

“It’s not –”

“There is. If it’s the case, and it could be, I just want you to know first, that you’ve been invaluable around here since you graduated the Academy. And second, that I have no clue of how your idiot of a father never was proud of you for it, but since if you’re dying tonight I think you deserve to die having heard it –”

“You don’t really need to say it, it’s fine –”

“Theon, just shut up and take a compliment. I’m proud of you, all right? Now go and kick some kaiju ass, and don’t you dare tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Clearly Theon closes his mouth at once, then swallows twice as he looks down on the ground, and when he finally looks up it’s obvious that he’s trying not to reach up and wipe at his eyes.

“Right. Great. I’m going then. And, uh, I’m sure you two can kick more ass than Robb and I could.”

“Tell yourself that,” Davos answers, and then Theon turns and runs down the stairs. If they both survive this Davos is definitely going to have a talk with Stark about a couple of things he should know, but he doesn’t let himself think that he’ll have a chance to do it.

He walks down the stairs as well and heads towards his and Stannis’s Jaeger before turning towards all the personnel of the Shatterdrome – they’re all here, of course.

“Well, people, stop staring and let’s get to work. We have to cancel the bloody apocalypse,” he says, and then he heads straight for the Conn-Pod, Stannis walking next to him.

He doesn’t let himself hope that all four of them survive this mess.

But oh, how he wishes they could.

3\. 

So, _maybe_ he should have thought it through.

Or… more through. Whatever. Or better, he should have remembered when Brienne had said the category five might show up, because for all that they used to argue viciously at the beginning, he never once thought she was full of shit or that she ever could be bad at her job. If Brienne tells you that the category five is striking at six in the evening then it’s going to be at fucking six in the evening, and really, he should have thought about that before bargaining with damned Roose Bolton about kaiju brains for an hour and just when he had finally convinced the son of a bitch that criminal empires can be converted from smuggling kaiju to something else, while smuggling kaiju when everyone is _dead_ isn’t as easy, then the fucking category five showed up.

A category five looking for him, since it had apparently seen him in that half-assed drift he had done with the other brain, and awesome, now they even fucking have a hive mind.

_Amazing_ , he thinks as rains falls all over his face and he’s staring at the category four carcass that Grey Wind left on the ground minutes ago – thank fuck that he hadn’t had to run too much before it was intercepted.

Fine, he’s not famous for being a nice person, but he wasn’t going to stick in the underground bunker when the thing was sniffing him and there were another two hundred people or so in it.

At least he only has to call so that Brienne flies down here with the necessary equipment. Now if only he didn’t need to stand guard –

Oh, _good, here he comes_ , he thinks when he sees Bolton coming closer to the carcass with his stupid polished shoes and Armani suit. His minions have been carving at the body for a while but none at the head, and he’s starting to get antsy.

“Bolton, you owe me a fucking brain,” he says without preambles.

“You are aware of how long it takes to dissect –”

“Oh, fuck you,” Jaime interrupts. “You obviously forgot between then and now, so I’m just gonna repeat it again. I need that brain, or we’re all dead. You, me, that creep you fathered, everyone in the city and your minions around here. So either you set them on getting it out now or –”

Jaime never finishes the sentence, because a noise coming from his left stops it.

Then he sees the flesh moving against the kaiju’s stomach.

_Fuck my life_ , he thinks as he runs from the fucking _baby kaiju_ that just jumped out of that corpse, and he’s not so sure that he’s going to survive this time, except that just when he’s out of breath, the thing collapses to the ground, not before having almost caught him and slashed at his wrist bad enough that it’s covered in blood and that he thinks that if it hadn’t fell right then it would have cut straight through it and left him without a hand.

Maybe it was too young, he thinks with a shudder, and then he realizes that maybe he doesn’t need a brain from Bolton. After all, the head is small, small enough that he could do the same procedure he had done in the lab if he doesn’t wait too long. He grabs his phone and calls the base, shouts at Brienne to get here right now with the proper machinery, and – right. He only has to hope that she’ll listen to him, otherwise he’s never going to make it.

He kneels on the ground and as he grabs a dirty handkerchief that he had in his pocket and that is going to have to do for his wrist until he finds a real doctor, he resolutely doesn’t think that he drifted with a kaiju not even a day ago and that it might fry his brain for good if he does it again this soon. If he does his left hand will start shaking and he’ll look at the right one without the necessary detachment and he’ll see all the blood covering his wrist, and he’ll realize that it’s not good at all, and he just has to get through this and call headquarters.

Then he can worry about his hand.

Not that he’s expecting to get any thanks or a mention in the history books, since he’s not actually down in the ocean, and when he picked this career he had been told often enough that he was wasting his life, but what if he was the kind of person who used to read stories about the middle ages and wishing he could be a knight just like the ones at the Round Table? 

Everyone in the family except Tyrion had made fun of him for it, because what a stupid notion, and Jaime had thought he could let it go at some point, but then the kaiju had happened, he knew that his talents lied in science and not in economics, and since he lost his family, his reputation in their circles and any decent income just because he wanted to save the world and be more like Galahad and less like Mordred, he’s going to see this fucking thing through.

He’s about to start cursing and to call again when –

“You crazy idiot, couldn’t you have come with someone else? And don’t tell me you’re planning to do this on your own, you almost killed yourself earlier!”

He jerks back and sees Brienne standing in front of him, her clothes completely soaked and a bag under her arm, hair plastered all over her forehead and the side of her face that got scarred when during the first kaiju attack half of her ceiling fell on her. And his equipment is right behind her and next to the carcass. Good. He stands up and goes to grab the wires he’s going to need to connect the brain with the equipment.

“Well, I have exactly ten minutes before this perfectly good brain shuts down and I don’t see any other way to gain information from the source. It’s my life against the world’s, I guess I can take the deal. Wench.”

He calls her like that because at some point, years ago, they found out that they both used to like the King Arthur stories. The next time they argued in the lab, he figured using a medieval term for an insult would have riled her up deliciously, and he had been right, even if by now she rolls her eyes rather than glare at him instead.

He doesn’t even know how she found him if she didn’t hear his directions, but it’s not time for questions. It’s time to stick the damn wires in, and so he does it ignoring the raging pain in his right hand.

“Fine, I see your point. But if you think I’m going to let you do it on your own, think about it again.”

And then she takes another Pons helmet out of her bag.

“What –”

“I had figured that you’d go and think about doing it yourself,” she says as she kneels down next to it and attaches her helmet to the equipment. “So when you called I thought it would have been best if I helped you, because genius that you are, there’s a reason why you usually need two people for a neural handshake. So do whatever you have to do and hook me up.”

“You’re – you do know we might both get our brain fried, don’t you?”

She sighs and looks at him in a way that makes his stomach clench, but not for bad reason. It’s almost sweet. Almost.

“I’d rather risk that than being sure that you’ll end up brain-dead. Not that you haven’t done enough damage the other time you tried this, so how wrong can it go? And how are you going to tell anyone if – _what happened to your hand_?”

Right. The makeshift bandage is soaked in blood.

“Later. Just – later, okay? Fine. Let’s do this before we run out of time. And – listen, if it ends badly, it might not have looked like it half of the time, but it was good to work with you.”

“Now you find manners, don’t you? Come on. Go.”

She puts the helmet on and she’s right, there’s no time and he’s not going to keep himself awake for long, adrenaline or not, and so he presses the green button.

For a moment he wonders, _shit but what if we aren’t compatible_ , then just before he’s gone, he decides that if all that bantering that’s gone back and forth between them in the last ten years isn’t compatibility then he has no clue of what it is.

It’s faster than the first time. He knows that she’s seeing his memories, she’s seeing his father being more of a businessman than else and hating his thirdborn after their mother died in childbirth ( _who dies in childbirth these days even_ ), she’s seeing him him being the only person that managed to keep good relationships in between his siblings and his father until he couldn’t anymore, she’s seeing the argument he had with Cersei the day he packed and left for Oldtown because that was where the best biology faculties were and she’s seeing that they never spoke since, she’s seeing the rows with his father and his monthly talks with Tyrion and how his life was just work and disillusion and work until he got stuck with her in the science division and at least he had someone he could talk to that would get what he meant even if they started on the wrong foot.

And he’s seeing her growing up and losing her mother and her three brothers to the kaiju along with the left side of her face when she was barely seventeen, after a childhood where life at home was good and life in school was hell because she always was good at maths, she never looked pretty one day in her life and she had no friends all along, she sees her crying the day she graduated high school because she found out that the guy who had been trying to ask her out for a month was doing it for a bet between friends and after her valedictorian speech and punching the idiot in the mouth she had cried for two hours and had lunch with her dad only and her eyes still red. He sees her going to university one year ahead and acing every test until she came up with the Jaeger coding writing her fucking doctorate thesis which she obviously never completed because the government snatched her away, and he sees her drowning herself in her work because _at least they take her seriously_ and still flinch inside whenever she heard someone commenting on her appearance, and then he sees that he wasn’t the only one who was grateful to share the lab – he hadn’t known that before that time she cracked a laugh after one of his admittedly bad jokes after three years, she hadn’t laughed out loud since high school. And then he sees – _oh_ , he thinks, _how didn’t I get it_ , but then he’s thrust forward and he’s feeling everything that she feels and _they’reworriedandfrightenedandsofascinated_ all at once and then they’re in the fucking hive mind and he can only try not to faint at the pressure but then he _sees_ oh _he sees_ and _fuck fuck fuck they had it all wrong_ –

He tears the helmet away from his head the moment Brienne does and he looks at her.

He’s sure that he looks as worried as her. As terrified as her. That’s before she moves away from him, takes a few paces and starts vomiting after falling on her knees, though, and he knows why she would. Oh, he knows.

He manages to stand up and walk towards her, but by the time he’s there she’s on her feet again and she looks pale as a sheet.

“They don’t know,” Brienne whispers. “Oh, damn, if we don’t tell them they’re all going to die the moment they get close to the breach.”

“We have to go,” he mutters, feeling dizzy already. “Fuck, we have to go now – ah, damn, help me up, Brienne.”

“It takes the end of the world for you to use my name, huh?”

But she’s taking his arm and hauling him up as she says it, and she’s warm even if she’s covered in rain, and he can feel everything that she feels still and there’s nothing but worry and something else he can’t quite pin.

“No. Wait a moment. Here. Stand.”

She puts him up against a wall and before he can ask what she’s doing, she takes off her sensible ruined jacket and her sensible ruined dress shirt, remaining in her sensible and quite chaste sports bra, and then tears the shirt in half and uses it to dress the slash on his wrist as best as she can. Then she puts the jacket back on, even if it does nothing to hide that she’s mostly naked underneath.

He has a flash of Brienne covering her meager breasts with her arms crossed over them in the gym showers and he starts shaking his head, but then she grabs his arm again and drags him forward while she runs towards the copter she came in from. 

He’s not really on the right side of conscious by the time he’s hauled in. Fine. Fine. Now he’s going to sit and they’re going to arrive at the Shatterdrome and he just needs to stay focused –

“Stop pretending it’s not hurting you.”

“How do you know I’m pretending?” Jaime asks as the helicopter flies and the adrenaline crash comes even closer.

“Because I’m feeling it too,” Brienne answers. “And it’s just gotten worse since you initiated the handshake.”

_If we survive this I’m going to study the hell out of this. After the hundred papers I’ll publish on fucking kaiju DNA_ , he thinks, and Brienne snorts next to him.

“Ah. Shit, I’m sorry if –”

“Don’t be. It’s fine.”

“I doubt being in my fucking head is a trip to the Summer Islands, wench.”

“I can think of worse places,” she whispers a moment later, and if he decides that passing out with his head on her shoulder at least until they get to the Shatterdrome is a good idea, well, it’s not like she’s pushing him away.

The peace lasts until she drags him downwards and starts running – right. They’re at the base. She’s going to the tech vault. He can run along. She screams for a doctor while she keeps on running, and oh but she’s barefoot by now, and he has lost so much blood –

Suddenly he feels himself focusing and regaining a bit more clarity.

A moment later he realizes it’s because she’s doing it.

Interesting. And then they’ve run through a door and Brienne has thrown Loras Tyrell to the ground because he was in the way.

“Guys, what –” Sam starts, but Brienne pushes him out of the way and grabs the comm microphone handing it to him.

“Why are you – ah, right, fuck, guys? You all there?” Jaime starts again, feeling out of breath even if the worlds are tumbling out of his mouth. He waits until both Stark and Seaworth give him the okay, then he takes another breath and tries to put the sentence together. “The breach, it goes to _another dimension_ , they’re not just coming from the center of the planet or wherever the fuck we were thinking –”

“And anything that isn’t _them_ trying to trespass it – well, it can’t. Because it’s wired to their genetic code – only kaiju can pass through it, which is why every other time we tried to bomb it, it didn’t work. If you went in as it is, it would – it would –”

“Most probably implode on fucking itself, so if you want it to work you need to kill yourselves some kaiju and have it on your shoulders or around you or whatever before you even try to go in –”

“It has to be _the same genetic material_ , guys. Or you all die before you even start. Got it?”

He faintly hears all four of them answer that they got it. 

“Wow, this was a whole new level of finishing each other’s sentences,” Sam says, sounding like someone who’s trying to lighten up a situation that is completely bleak.

“That’s what drifting does,” Brienne answers. “And someone get this idiot a doctor. Or bring him to med bay –”

“I’m not going anywhere until this is done. I can see a doctor here.”

“If you don’t faint first,” Brienne sighs. Tyrell brings a couple chairs over and they both fall down on them, and fuck Brienne is still half-naked and looks like she can’t care less, and he can hear Renly going around and cursing every three seconds, but he can’t possibly keep himself concentrated –

Then everything is clear again as he blinks his eyes and he turns to his left.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s working, right?” Brienne answers, shrugging, and Jaime tells himself that if neither of them dies tonight he’s going to come clean with her about what he saw in the drift.

But not just yet.

2\. 

About ten minutes before they reach the place where they’re going to be dropped, Theon takes a very deep breath and decides that for once in his life he will initiate a damned conversation about his feelings.

Admittedly, it’s not the right time or place. And he also could not do it – after all, no one chased any RABIT this time. The thing is, he didn’t even ponder if he should keep Robb from seeing some of his memories like he did last time. But he had this suspicion that trying to shield Robb from the three weeks he spent in company of a Ramsay Bolton just after Asha died was the reason he lost concentration and chased the RABIT the first time, so he figured that there was no point in doing it again.

Also because he kind of wants Robb to know what he’s getting into, if the vibes he’s getting aren’t wrong, and considering that they drifted together, he’s pretty sure he’s not wrong.

So he had let him see everything. And Robb has been sending him worried looks all this time, but hasn’t actually talked about it, and Theon knows why – he’s afraid of saying something wrong. Idiot. Theon doubts he could, but that’s not the point.

“Listen,” he starts, figuring that he should just get it out of his system. “I hope that – that it didn’t make you uncomfortable –”

“If you’re sensing that, you are half wrong.”

“What?”

“I’m not uncomfortable. I’m pissed. I’m just toning it down. And I’m pissed at him, not you.”

“It was – it was my fault though. I mean, I should have known better –”

“I don’t think we have long enough for me to explain you how it possibly couldn’t, but remind me to do that if we ever get out of that breach.”

“But –”

“There’s exactly one thing I’m going to tell you about it, if you really want to know my opinion.”

“Shoot then,” he says, sounding nowhere as sure as he’d like to be. He’s still not sure he believes the toning down emotions deal. Maybe Robb just doesn’t want to tell him that he thought it was disgusting, or that he had been, and in which world it might not be his fault? He could have avoided getting into that kind of mess, but –

“Theon?”

“Yeah?”

“You have a very nice name. That suits you a whole lot. Do I have to say that again?”

For a moment he has no clue of what to do with Robb’s so very earnest face and with what he just said, because that was not what he had expected at all, and then he suddenly feels kind of warmer for no reason whatsoever, and it feels _good_ , so very much, and then he realizes that he’s merely getting vibes from Robb. It makes sense – he always was the kind of person who always felt everything in the drift and took it home for at least a day after – but he hadn’t thought that anyone would ever feel like that about him at all.

It’s not that, though. It’s what Robb just said. Because out of everything he saw in the drift he managed to catch the one part that always hurt the most thinking back about it, and he hadn’t thought he could ever bring himself to smile in this situation but the moment he realizes he’s doing it, he can’t stop himself from it.

“You don’t have to. And – thanks.”

“How about we make a deal?”

“A deal?”

“You stop thinking that I care about who you’ve been with, we both focus on nuking this stupid breach and when we’re back on the ground I’m showing you exactly how much I’m not like that other idiot. How about that?”

Theon was going to say yes. He really was going to.

Then he heard Stannis from the speakers.

“Not that I’m not happy for you two if it works out, but you do know that we have the comms open and that you’re drifting, so you don’t need to talk?”

Robb goes red in the face as much as his hair, or close to it. “Er. Sorry, sir.”

They both can hear the Marshal chuckling in the background and Theon is pretty sure that he’s as red in the face as Robb as he thinks at him, _deal_.

Then he stops himself from thinking about it because if he ever wants Robb to hold up to his end of the deal they need to nuke the damned breach and kill some kaiju so that they can pass through it.

Call that a piece of cake.

Clearly, that’s when the comms open and the science division starts screaming at them while finishing each others’ sentences, but when he realizes what’s the deal he gets why they sound that worried.

“Fuck,” he says when they’re done.

“Cheer up, they could have told us when we were already down in the ocean. At least we can try to come up with an alternative.”

“Robb, we’re dropping in _five minutes_.”

“There’s a reason why I was the first of my class in the strategy tests.” Robb doesn’t say anything for a short while, and Theon can feel the distress coming off him, but then he clears his throat and turns towards the comm mic. Why is he thinking _I’m sorry_ at him, though?

“Marshall? Can you hear me?”

“We hear you,” Davos says through the comms a moment later.

“I think we need to change our plans.”

“I’m listening.”

“They said that in order to get through the breach the – the nuke has to be disguised as a kaiju, didn’t they? You can’t do that. I mean, you can’t drop anything if they have to be covered in kaiju corpses.”

Right. Great point. He still doesn’t get what Robb is –

Ah. No, now he does.

“But we can, can’t we? Because we’re working on a nuclear reactor,” Theon finishes a moment later.

He can feel Robb thinking _that exactly. It’s not entirely suicidal. If we get into the escape pods soon enough there’s a chance we can get out. But – if you don’t want to do it –_

_I’m doing whatever it takes, you idiot. Dying with you isn’t the worse way to go I can think of._

Robb clears his throat again.

“What he said. When we’re dropped – _you_ should cover us. I think you can make it sure that the nuke unloads after you get out of the Jaeger. We get down, we kill a couple of kaiju, when you’re sure that we have a carcass to use you get yourself ready to leave and then drop the nuke – it’s going to clear the way for us. Then we go in and we terminate everything.”

“Stark.” Stannis’s voice has rarely sounded this feeble. “You’re telling us that you’re both committing suicide. You’re not even thirty. If anyone should take the suicidal route it should be us.”

Theon shakes his head and answers for Robb before Robb can. “Sir, even if you do, it would be useless. The nukes wouldn’t detonate. And it’s not entirely suicidal – if we time it right I guess we can get out. He’s right – either we do it like this or it doesn’t work.”

For a moment there’s silence.

“Damn you two, fine. You’re right. We’re doing it your way. As long as you swear you’ll try to get out, because I don’t want the two of you on my conscience.”

“Duly noted, Marshall,” Robb says, and he’s obviously forcing himself to sound like he thinks this has a chance in hell to work for everyone involved.

_Two minutes to the drop_ , Sam Tarly says from the comms, sounding as if he wants to start crying.

“Robb?” He has to say it out loud before it’s too late.

“Yeah?”

“I can feel you planning all the ways in which I survive this and you don’t. I’ve already done it once and if you think I’m doing it again, you’re wrong. Either the both of us get out or none of us does. Or you get out.”

“I’m – I don’t ever want to do that again either.”

“Great. Then don’t. Okay?”

“Okay. Right. I swear I won’t.”

At least he can also feel that Robb isn’t lying.

He’s pretty sure that signing your own death sentence should feel a lot worse than it actually does.

1.

“Robb, for the last time –”

“Marshall, Sir, we’re good. Get things set and leave.”

“Fine. Just make sure that we can give you both a medal later, because I’m not going to organize your funerals without any fucking bodies,” Seaworth says, and Robb would laugh if only he could find it in himself to. 

At least they have a category five on their shoulders and Theon is keeping a second anchored to the side with the left arm – they asked fucking team science in the comms before they went dead and they said it would probably suffice.

Probably.

He can hear the sounds of the escape pods getting ready on the other side of the functioning comms and he hopes with all his might that at least someone gets out of this mess alive.

“Stark, quit it. I’m good.”

“Bullshit, I can feel how not good you are,” Robb replies softly. He looks in front of him, sees the two escape pods fly straight towards the ocean’s surface. They look like tiny dots.

The two category five emerging from the breach don’t, but it’s fine – the automatic nuke drop takes at most one minute. They’re safe.

“What?”

“Come on, I can hear you thinking that you don’t want to die just now. I don’t want to either, for that matter, but –”

“There’s no other way, I know that. I’m just thinking ridiculously stupid things. It’s fine.”

“Like what?”

“Well, you saw things in that drift. Who was the last person I kissed?”

For a moment Robb doesn’t know what to make of it – he’s seen Theon being with plenty of people, especially one night stands with Shatterdrome techs in the previous years, but now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t think he ever kissed any of them. Which means –

“Wait, _him_?”

“I was – I was thinking about kissing you before we got the call to suit up. Just to – you know. He also was my first, so – I guess I just wanted to see how it was when it wasn’t completely fucked up. Then I chickened out, and – I don’t really want to die not even knowing how it is. But whatever. You don’t always get what you want, right?”

Proudwing is starting to glow, Robb thinks absentmindedly. It’s going to be maybe fifteen seconds. And then it’s going to be over in maybe another ten, and they’re going to have to hurry when the way is still clear.

Plenty enough for what he wants to do.

“Maybe, but I think you can get the next best thing.”

“What –”

“Watch out,” Robb says, and then he concentrates for a moment. He pictures the two of them kissing. Slowly. Without much hurry at all, at least in the beginning. He thinks about the way he’d kiss Theon right now if he could. He pictures the way he’d touch the back of his head or his cheek, he thinks about all the details he can possibly muster until he sees that the nuke is about to explode.

The moment Proudwing goes up in nuclear flames, he pushes that image at Theon, as forcefully as he can, and he can feel the moment Theon takes in a sharp breath, and then he closes his eyes when the light outside becomes unbearable to look at.

When he opens them again, there’s no Jaeger and no kaiju in front of them. Just the opened breach.

“That’s how I’d kiss you,” Robb whispers.

“Fuck you, you haven’t made this much better.”

“Then how about we go down and we stop assuming we’re both going to die?”

“Fine. You owe me to live up to it, though.”

“Gladly. So, we’re going?”

“We’re going.”

Robb makes sure that the hold he has on his kaiju corpse is strong and then they start running and there’s nothing stopping them until the breach is right there.

He hopes that two corpses are enough, he really does, and then they jump.

\--

“Shit, it’s working,” Theon says, awed, when they’re down and they haven’t gone up in flames at first impact. “Fuck me, they were right.”

“Wow. This is completely insane,” Robb says as he looks outside, feeling as if he’s just fallen into some kind of acid trip – he can only see bright colors piercing his sight as they keep on falling downwards.

“Don’t you tell me. Right. We should – oh, fuck.”

Before Robb can ask what’s going on, he looks at the console.

_Fuck them indeed_ , the oxygen levels just dropped at ten percent for the both of them.

“Damn, damn,” Theon says, “right. Stark, we need to move. Now.”

“It’s enough if we start the automatic –”

“There’s no automatic anything. When I fixed this up, the only way to set it was so that if you want to make this thing self-destroy you have to do it by hand.”

The oxygen levels move to eight percent.

“All right. Theon, get the escape pods ready.”

“I’m not –”

“I’ve piloted this for years, I know how that procedure works. Get them both ready and get into one. I swear I’m not letting you out if I can’t do that myself, okay? Go.”

Theon looks like he could argue, but the more they speak the more oxygen they burn, and the moment they move they’ll burn even more. He nods and Robb can feel the handshake break when Theon leaves his place in the conn-pod and runs to his side where the pods are.

Okay.

He takes a deep breath and does the same. Damn, he hadn’t realized how heavy the suit could be when you actually have to move in it someplace without fucking gravity the way they know it, and when the oxygen level drops to two percent the moment he arrives in front of the red button, he starts having doubts about even managing to get back to the escape pods.

He doesn’t think about it and breaks the safety glass, then punches the button.

_Self-distruct procedure activate_ d, the AI says a moment later. _You have two minutes to evacuate. Repeat, you have to minutes to evacuate._

And his oxygen level has just dropped to zero.

_Fuck it_ , he thinks, and then he takes off his helmet and throws it away. His head is starting to spin already, but if he hurries up he thinks he can stay upright enough to arrive at the escape pods – there has to be some oxygen left in the air, he hopes, he really does, and as the floor starts shaking under his feet he tries to run, or the closest he can come to it.

By the time he arrives at the pods, he can barely see straight and most of what he can see is red. Every noise feels like a hammer pounding into his skull and Theon is already in the pod, which of course is already sealed, and he’s looking at him as if he’s going to murder Robb if he pushes the first button and makes him leave, but –

_I swear I’m trying to come_ , Robb thinks, hoping that there’s enough of a handshake going on to make Theon hear it, and then he pushes the button.

The pod is gone a moment later.

_Good_ , he thinks, feeling like he could vomit any second, and then – 

_Forty five seconds left to evacuate_ , the AI says, and – fuck. He has to try. He doesn’t like breaking his promises and he really wants to kiss Theon for real, and he doesn’t want to die like this, and so he takes a last, gasping breath and crawls into the escape pod. He’s pretty sure that he manages to punch all the buttons in the right order just because of muscle memory, and he’s sure that the moment he presses the button that sends his pod skyrocketing outside it’s just twenty seconds until detonation, so he might not make it at all, but he tried, didn’t he?

It’s the last thing he thinks before he passes out for good.

\--

“ – you stupid stubborn fucking _idiot_ , if you dare being dead I’m going to wish you weren’t just so I could kill you again myself, who told you it was a good idea to do that? It doesn’t matter if you at least were gracious enough to provide a body for a funeral, I’m not –”

“Theon, damn it, you are going to kill me if you crush me more than this,” Robb groans, not even grasping half of what’s going on. He just knows that Theon is ranting just against his ear, that his head pounds like crazy and that his ribs are legitimately hurting from being crushed against someone’s chest this hard. Oh, and that he smells salt.

“Wait, what – oh. I couldn’t feel a pulse,” Theon says and he’s not being crushed anymore.

Robb blinks and sees that he’s lying down on the opened escape pod, that Theon is kneeling in front of him looking like someone who has just had a crying fit, they’re floating on the ocean and Sam Tarly is blathering in his comm receiver stuff like _how is he even alive_.

Robb grabs the ear piece and throws it into the ocean – it’s just going to make his headache feel worse.

“Well, I think I’m definitely not dead. I’m pretty sure that if this was the afterlife I wouldn’t feel like my head was about to split open.”

“Yeah, and who told you to make me leave first?”

“I followed, didn’t I?”

“… guess you did,” Theon replies, soft enough that it’s almost inaudible, and then –

Then it really hits Robb.

“Shit, we did it, didn’t we?”

“Seems like it. Tarly said that the breach is collapsed on top of everything, so – yeah.”

“Okay. Great. I guess I can move on to keeping my side of the bargain, then.”

“Sorry?”

“You idiot, I keep my promises, don’t I?”

Then he throws his arms around Theon’s neck so that he has some leverage to get to a kneeling position and kisses him exactly the way he had thought he would before, except that it’s a bit more hurried and entirely better because it’s real, and even if he can taste saltwater everywhere it feels better than any other time he’s kissed someone. For a moment Theon stands still as if he hadn’t expected it, but he kisses back without holding back, his hands going back to dig into Robb’s shoulders, and when Robb has to move away because he’s starting to feel dizzy he knows he’s grinning shamelessly.

“Well, you’re a lot better at this in reality,” Theon says a moment later, but he sounds as if he’s about to break down crying in relief.

“Good, because until someone comes fishing us out I’m not planning on doing anything else. And the moment I stop feeling this dizzy you’ll get a lot more than kissing.”

“Good thing you keep your promises, huh?”

Robb doesn’t even answer that and doesn’t point out that there are tear tracks on both their faces, and kisses him all over again.

0

“I’m pretty sure we should feel offended that neither of them has even realized that we’re here,” Stannis mutters under his breath, even if he hardly sounds reproaching. Fine, they could have at least asked if everything was all right before starting to smooch in front of everyone, but he can’t really begrudge them. From what he heard on the comms down in the ocean, it was a long time coming.

“We can embarrass them later when we tell them we’ve seen it all unfold,” Davos answers, and at least he sounds amused. Until Robb’s escape pod showed up in the water, he had looked like defeat made flesh. “Also, how’s your arm?”

He figures there’s no point in lying.

“I can’t feel it,” he answers, shrugging. “But it was worth it.”

“You’re completely insane, but I can’t even say I disagree,” Davos sighs as he drops his head on Stannis’s good shoulder.

He figures it’s not terribly bad if rescue doesn’t come right now.

+1

“Well, I suppose that if I put together some recovery group for people who lost limbs during this war I could do worse than having Stannis Baratheon in it.”

“I just hope this is the morphine talking,” Brienne sighs, sitting next to Jaime’s med bay bed.

At least he’s taking the news that every damned tendon in his right wrist has been damaged badly enough that he’s never going to use that hand fully in his entire life not as bad as he could have.

“I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t do that kinda thing. Damn, too bad.”

“Good thing you can joke about it.”

“Hey, I’m not dead. I don’t need two hands to write all the papers that will finally turn me into the most powerful scientist in this continent. Well, along with you I guess, but I could do a lot worse than that, too. I could be dead or brain-dead for that matter. Actually, I don’t even need my right hand, you can do the actual writing if we’re splitting. Most of my relatives hated me even before now, so it really doesn’t matter. I was sort of disowned already. Actually, you should start thinking about the first paper we’re writing. We totally need to rub in everyone’s face how wrong they were when they left just the two of us in the fucking science division.”

“Maybe when you’re off the morphine, but sure thing.” She can’t even bring herself to tell him to slow down – to be entirely honest, she is waiting for the moment they start publishing papers about everything they found out in the last ten years and they stop being the pariahs of the scientific community. She’s still harboring resent over the last time she was at some conference – five years ago – and people kept on whispering behind her back that she was wasting her time with stupid kaiju and sharing the office with a certified crazy biologist. She’s harboring resent towards all the people who left the science division to go to some better paid university for that matter.

“Right. Also damn, why am I stuck here?”

“Because you lost a fuckton of blood and you need medical treatment?”

“Well, since you’ve been here for five minutes it means you can gossip about what’s happening outside this room, can’t you?”

At that, Brienne does roll her eyes.

“Fine, just because you deserve a break. If I say that everyone has been partying since they stopped the clock it’s not going to be enough, is it?”

“Of course not. I want details, wench.”

“Obviously you would. Uhm, Oberyn and Ellaria managed to convince some nurse to bring them down. So they’re currently partying, too. In wheelchairs. I’m pretty sure Loras and Renly eloped at some point.”

“They did _what_?”

“No clue. They stayed up in the tech vault until the Marshal and the others came back, then they had a few drinks but half an hour later they disappeared.”

“They could be screwing their brains out for all you know.”

“Right, when one of them is covered in first and second degree burns?”

“Touché. Then?”

“Er, Sam Tarly went to ‘make a call’ one hour before I came here and he wasn’t back yet when I left.”

“Right. I suppose it’s phone sex with his soulmate up at the Wall.”

Brienne rolls her eyes all over again. Clearly that has to be the first conclusion he reaches, right?

“Your colleague Stannis looks in fact like the happiest person on this planet.”

“What?”

“Yep. Hasn’t stopped smiling since they got here. I think everyone except the Marshal is freaked out.”

“Didn’t you say that he’s probably going to have a useless arm?”

“He still seems to think this was the best week of his life. I have no clue, they both looked over the moon though.”

“Guess it’s high time they come out.”

“Sorry?”

“Come on, didn’t you notice? They’ve been together for bloody years, they’re just good at hiding it. Seriously, only Stannis could be happy with an arm out of commission. Whatever, I think you’re missing the juiciest gossip.”

“Is it the juiciest gossip or is it about that bet I didn’t take you up on? Because no, they didn’t get married.”

“Aw, shucks. Really?”

“Really. Then again they haven’t stopped kissing the daylights out of each other since they came back, so…”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Some television channels came for interviews and stuff and they answered while being attached to the hip. And they kissed in between answers.”

“And I was here while this gloriousness went down?”

“Next time, don’t get your hand almost cut off if you’re that interested.”

“Right, so the moral of the story is that everyone is getting some except you and I. That seems pretty fucking unfair to me, doesn’t it?”

“… what?” She hadn’t been expecting that out of everything. Though maybe she should have. Knowing him and all. “I doubt you’re up for _getting some_. As for me, I haven’t been getting any for years, I won’t be that troubled if I don’t now.”

“Too bad. I’m told celebratory sex is glorious. But other than that, I think you’re lying.”

“I’m not –”

“Brienne, maybe we should stop avoiding the elephant in the room, shouldn’t we? Drugs or not, I think I remember what I saw in the drift well enough.”

Oh. Damn. She had sort of hoped he would be too caught in the kaiju part of the drift to notice that she hasn’t been thinking about him in… well, friendly terms for some years now. Friendly. In co-worker terms. Then again, she never told him, but why would she even bother? Deep down, she likes him not just because he’s that attractive, even if that doesn’t hurt, but… even if they used to scream at each other a lot more harshly in the beginning, he always treated her like a peer, the moment he realized she was actually good at her job. They have insulted each other countless times, but he never once mentioned her unattractiveness, even when just thinking about him would send her in a fit of rage (and the reverse was probably valid). She never had that many friends and none that she had shared with all the vital space she’s shared with him, and so if at one point she realized that maybe she liked him a lot more than she was supposed to? To be honest, she’s been trying for a while to get over it – it’s not as if guys like him ever end up with girls like her, not to mention that now he’ll finally have the respect he deserves from the scientific community and he could virtually have anyone he’d want. So… he noticed.

“Listen, can we do this like… like adults? I mean, there’s no reason for you to drag it longer than –”

“Who said that I want you to… get over me?”

“How did you even –”

“I have this hypothesis that if you drift more than once in a day and you’re not adjusted to it, it might just make the handshake stronger on your side. I mean, not that I have proof, but I can feel everything that you’re desperately trying not to project right now, and obviously the contrary isn’t valid. I mean, I don’t think it’s the same for you.”

“Uh. No. The handshake broke when you left for the med bay. What – what makes you think that?”

“Well, if the handshake was working for you as well, you’d know that the last thing I want you to do is getting over it, so it’s obviously not the case, is it?”

For a moment, she feels honestly speechless. She racks her brain for any comeback, but the thing is that he’s looking at her very seriously, as if he’s not joking at all, and – she hadn’t really paid attention in the drift past the point where he had come to respect her work, maybe because she was too worried about the kaiju, but after he had projected a certain weird but fuzzy feeling that was only directed at her.

“You’re doing it again.” He’s smirking slightly now, but it’s not malicious at all.

“What?”

“Second-guessing things. Do you think that I would go and fuck with you now? Please.”

She swallows and brings her chair closer, still unsure of what to do. He smirks again, moving upwards so that he’s sitting up straighter.

“Stop being undecided and go for it.”

“Go for what?”

“For what you’re thinking right now. I know exactly what it is. And I’m not stopping you at all.”

“You did see what happened to the last person who tried to make me do that because they wanted to have fun, didn’t you?”

“I did, and I’m entirely not interested in that same treatment. I’m also not moving for the foreseeable future.”

Right.

Right.

He’s staring at her as if he’s entirely serious about it, and – right. She needs to not think about it in detail or she’s going to chicken out of it, as ridiculous as it seems.

So she takes a breath, kneels next to the side of his bed – it’s pretty low in the first place –, brings a hand on his cheek, takes a moment to feel how the scratch of his beard feels under her fingers, and then she figures it’s time to stop stalling.

She moves forward and kisses him, and she doesn’t really have the guts to go further than pressing her mouth against his, never mind that she’s kissed someone a grand total of two times, including this one, and she hardly knows how to go about it.

But then he parts his lips with a sigh and she can’t help pressing back just a bit, still going in completely blind but at least knowing he really did want it. And it’s nice, it really is, especially when his left hand reaches up for the back of her head and draws her closer.

So maybe she gets bolder and slips a bit of tongue inside his mouth, which receives a very enthusiastic answer, and by the time she has to lean back because she needs to breathe in, she feels dizzy with how good everything feels right now, and she’s kind of sure that some of it might be Jaime projecting through whatever bond is still up between them, and maybe her heart swells a bit at that, but she can’t avoid it.

Then he looks straight at her and smirks just a bit, looking entirely satisfied with what just happened, and – fine. She grins back because she has to, and she’s pretty sure she’s never felt this happy in her entire life.

“Woah,” he says the moment she thinks that, “if I had known I’d have kissed you a lot earlier.”

“Excuse me?”

“Right – you can’t feel it. But I can. Wench, you’re projecting like it’s no one’s business and let me tell you, I can’t remember the last time in my entire life I made anyone that happy. Or what passes for it.” He sounds out of breath, and his eyes are slightly glassy, but he’s still grinning hard enough to hurt.

“I’m – I’m sorry, I didn’t –”

“Brienne, how about you don’t dare apologize and just kiss me again instead?”

She’s about to do just that when she hears clapping coming from the door.

She turns to find herself facing Oberyn and Ellaria, who are still on wheelchairs but looking entirely fine otherwise.

“What –”

“Oh, please, do get back at it in a moment,” Oberyn says. “Just, would you two be so nice to tell me if this is a new development or if you had a secret relationship going on?”

“… It’s a new development?” Jaime answers.

“This is excellent news. Lannister, the moment the two of us can walk, remind me to buy you a drink.”

“… Why?”

“Because I was the only one who said that it wasn’t true that you two had been going at it for the last four years in the betting pool, so I am in fact going to get my considerable amount of money.”

“Wait, how long was that on?”

“The betting pool? Three years, give or take. You’re not the only one doing that, you know.”

And then he wheels away after pulling Ellaria in for a kiss and – right. Fine. Brienne is not letting this get to her head.

Jaime looks kind of mortified as they leave. “Well. Greyjoy still owes me some money, at least.”

“Well, Oberyn is buying you a drink, isn’t he?”

“Weren’t you about to kiss me again? Don’t tell me I have to wait that much longer.”

“God forbid I’d keep you waiting,” Brienne sighs before deciding that pretenses are useless. She climbs on the bed, lying down next to him, and she kisses him again a moment later.

She still feels a certain contentment making its way under her skin throughout her entire body that she’s pretty sure isn’t coming from her, and maybe they should study this at some point, but not now, and she decides that for the first day after they stopped the end of the world, it couldn’t have started better.

End.


End file.
